On Tuesday February 3rd, WagonWheel Presents… welcomes Jeffrey Foucault to The Greystones. Born and raised in the upper Midwest, the land of Dylan and Prine, Jeffrey Foucault has been on the road across the USA and Europe for over a decade with a string of critically acclaimed albums, garnering accolades for a tersely elegant fusion of rock ‘n’ roll, blues, and country. In 2015 Foucault returns to the UK with drummer Billy Conway (Morphine), offering a raw, stripped-down duo performance that mines the darker seams of American music.

Support comes from J. Tilley. Advance tickets priced at £10 are available from http://www.wegottickets.com/event/292613 and the venue (12-6pm) or entry on the night will be £12. Doors open 7.30pm for an 8pm start.

***JEFFREY FOUCAULT***

Lauded for his wide-ranging and meticulous songwriting, Jeffrey Foucault has released four collections of original songs under his own name, and two full-band collaborations with contemporary poet Lisa Olstein under the moniker Cold Satellite. His songs distill a terse amalgam of blues, country, rock ’n’ roll, and folk. He lives in Western Massachusetts with his wife, the singer and songwriter Kris Delmhorst, and their 6 year old daughter.

In 2015 Jeffrey Foucault will release Salt As Wolves, his fifth collection of original songs. Featuring Foucault’s longtime rhythm section Billy Conway (Morphine) on drums and Jeremy Moses Curtis (Booker T) on bass, and reuniting him with legendary electric guitar player Bo Ramsey (Lucinda Williams, Greg Brown), Salt As Wolves offers twelve tracks that exist out of time, like a field recording of a place that never existed: a lean, bold blues record that deftly weaves together disparate strands of sound and experience, raw love and desperate wisdom.

I take the small roads when I can. I hit the small rooms with a couple old guitars and a 5-watt Skylark amp. Sometimes with a band, and then I stand up. Mostly it’s just me and my friend Billy Conway, the best drummer I ever heard. Then we both sit down and I stomp my foot. I own a Smith Corona typewriter and a Western Bell rotary phone, and I use both. I wore a pearl snap cowboy shirt in my Kindergarten school picture. Irony isn’t my thing. I write songs about love, memory, God, desire, wilderness and loss.

I grew up in Wisconsin. My Dad wore a tie to work and played a knock-off Gibson with a chunk of the headstock missing where he’d backed over it with the car. Mom sang along. I knew all my Grandparents well into my thirties, and both my Great Grandmas. Winter Sundays were for church or ice-fishing, and summers we hauled an old travel trailer up to the north woods. School was a drag, and I mostly drew pictures. When I was 11 I bought a cassette copy of Little Richard’s Greatest Hits. At 17 I learned to play all the songs on John Prine’s 1971 debut in my room with the door locked and subway posters of British New Wave bands looking morbidly on. At 19 I stole a copy of Townes Van Zandt’s ‘Live & Obscure’. At 24 I made a record and start traveling around the country. I have two older brothers. They don’t sing but they both fish.

I live out in New England now in a little town with a river through the middle. I can’t get home without crossing good water and it fairly makes up for living east, which isn’t in my blood. We have a chicken coop and a little barn and an old car that runs. I like to listen to records real loud when I do the dishes, and I do most of the dishes.

“Jeffrey Foucault sings stark, literate songs that are as wide open as the landscape of his native Midwest.” The New Yorker

“Contemporary and timeless.” The New York Times

“Songwriting brilliance.” Mojo

“Quietly brilliant.” The Irish Times

“The music of Wisconsin native Foucault is the kind so many aspire to but never attain: beat-up troubadour folk whittled to dolorous perfection.” Uncut

“Haunting and Poignant… Jeffrey Foucault is an original, beguiling songwriter with a marvelously expressive voice.” The Telegraph

“This is rock-and-roll in the key of country-noir: bleak visions of departed lovers, flickering TVs and empty landscapes underlined by pedal steel guitar and cello.” The Washington Post

With his former band Grassoline having recently gone their separate ways, front man J. Tilley plays a set of solo tunes encompassing material from the band known for their bluegrass influenced brand of alt-country that featured guitar, double bass, fiddle, banjo and mandolin and sometimes more. In 2012 they released their debut CD “Mountain & Grave”. Americana UK described the 6 tracks as having “the makings of something really special”.

“Grassoline are not made for these times. Theirs is a music of epic grandeur and epic heartbreak that is so complete within itself that it is not of the tradition, it’s not just bluegrass or folk tinged transplanted balladry, it’s the living music of a colonised landscape. Grassoline are a band more than worthy of your attention whether on record or live.” Americana-UK.com

They followed up that release with the EPs Here But Not At Home Vol. 1 & Vol. 2, releases which won them many more plaudits.